The Linux-based living room gaming announcements Valve co-founder Gabe Newell promised last week began today with the unveiling of SteamOS, a new Linux-based operating system focused on living room gaming.

"As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself," Valve wrote on a page announcing the upcoming OS. "SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines."

Why a new OS? Valve says that with SteamOS, the company has "achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level." The Linux-based platform will also be freely licensable to hardware manufacturers, allowing a wide number of "Steam Box" living room PCs to germinate. Newell has previously called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for the gaming market, so it's not at all surprising that his company decided to move forward with a more open option under its direct control.

With the vast majority of Steam's thousands of games currently designed to run only on Windows and/or Mac, compatibility is obviously a major concern with any Linux-based system. Valve says that "hundreds" of games are currently running on their new OS (presumably building off current Steam for Linux compatibility) and promises that the coming weeks will see many AAA game announcements with native SteamOS support in 2014 (when living room systems with SteamOS are expected to launch). The OS will also support the full Steam catalog through "in-home streaming," which presumably means remote play from an office PC to a living room TV over a home router.

SteamOS will be fully compatible with existing Steam functions like automatic game updates across machines, Steam Workshop add-ons and marketplaces, in-game chat and friends lists, family sharing across multiple accounts, and more, according to Valve. In addition, Valve says it's "working with many of the media services you know and love" to bring unspecified online music, TV, and movie services to the new OS.

Promoted Comments

Linux is the future of gaming, so long as it is no longer called Linux, is locked down from outside control, and will stream stuff from the Steam Store (but no word of streaming games purchased through GoG or other vendors?

Let me put it this way: if and when Steam allows other storefronts without SteamOS, then I will believe the cries of "open source" were anything but marketing material.

I like the concept of having a solid target for game developers that is a known quantity in the living room, outside of the current players.

I see Nvidia/AMD throwing more $$ at linux driver support, simply because they'll sell more hardware because of it.

The open nature of the OS, unlike Xbone / PS4 will allow me to do other things I wouldn't normally be able to do without hacking / modding the console (MKV / Samba support, etc.)

There just seems like so much upside to this, its exciting. It's also risky...but I think if the hardware is done right for the "mainstream" people, along with me being able to build my own machine...it will work out well.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

509 Reader Comments

Joking aside, I've never done any gaming on Linux. From a Living room / couch standpoint, would we have to use keyboard and mouse? What kind of hardware support is there for external controllers?

I use Steam on Ubuntu (GNU/Linux) right now and out of the box it supports a wired Xbox controller. There will be many different input devices compatible but you will be able to use a keyboard/mouse if you want to!

Sweet, that's great news! Now just to wait for GTA 5 to come out on Steam...

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

Please identify reasons that serious Windows gamers would ditch Windows to switch to a new system with a smaller AAA library and would require extensive setup with unknown and unproven hardware compatibility capabilities?

It sounds like more competition and I'm always for that. I'm excited to see what the final product is like, I'll probably install it on one of my systems to play around with. Who knows if it will go anywhere but it will be exciting to see.

Microsoft seems to be trying to make us all hate them recently so it's good to see some alternatives. My ultimate version of the future would be one where you can play all your games on any hardware (assuming it's powerful enough) and we don't need to put up with console/OS wars ever again.

P.S. GTA V is awesome but it'd rather play it on my Crossfired 7950s instead of the Xbox 360 I had to dust off just for the occasion.

My (unrealistic) hope is that they're going to announce HL3 as a SteamBox exclusive. Wait, hear me out! If they really have a >$100 "streaming" type product incoming, just only sell HL3 with the box itself (or HL3 comes with a "free" SteamBox). They'd have to basically break even on the hardware and not make anything on the game, but that would guarantee millions of SteamBox installations as fast as people could buy them, making their (profitable) platform ubiquitous virtually overnight.

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

Please identify reasons that serious Windows gamers would ditch Windows to switch to a new system with a smaller AAA library and would require extensive setup with unknown and unproven hardware compatibility capabilities?

Cost? Console like ease of use? I can think of quite a few reasons.

Edit: And have you compared installing a distro like ubuntu to installing windows? Tell me how much hardware works out of the box on each of them...

All I want is just one valid reason why Win8 is horrible for PC games. Other than that, will a big blockbuster like BF4 run on SteamOS? If not, then what's the reason for going to a new OS?

That's what I was thinking. Some PC gaming friend of mine said Win8 was better for gaming than Win7... had better performance. I believe my friend over a salesman.

The performance increase is in the 2-3% range. Not exactly transformative. I suppose it's 'horrible' because the Windows App Store comes with it and has the potential to directly compete with Steam. In sticking with Steam, but I can appreciate the presence of a valid competitor...

Of course, if Microsoft actually took an interest in competing with Steam, they'd lock a bunch of content on their App Store and force people to upgrade to use it (moreso than they already have). Market segmentation is bad for end users.

The hostility towards the notion of someone competing with Microsoft in PC gaming is palpable. But then I guess that's what happens when you try to compete with a monopoly that has a market almost completely locked down.

As a long time PC gamer, this is probably the only 'console' I'd bother buying (so if a game is better suited to controllers & large screen I don't have to buy it twice). Especially since it seems like it will be price efficient.

Seeing as I hardly use Windows for anything other than gaming, I might even install SteamOS on a higher-end desktop.

I like the concept of having a solid target for game developers that is a known quantity in the living room, outside of the current players.

I see Nvidia/AMD throwing more $$ at linux driver support, simply because they'll sell more hardware because of it.

The open nature of the OS, unlike Xbone / PS4 will allow me to do other things I wouldn't normally be able to do without hacking / modding the console (MKV / Samba support, etc.)

There just seems like so much upside to this, its exciting. It's also risky...but I think if the hardware is done right for the "mainstream" people, along with me being able to build my own machine...it will work out well.

If this lets me do screen mirroring for anything and everything on my Windows PC, I say bring it on. If its great and myriad benefits are for Steam games only, then I guess that shows what Gabe was really worried about when he said Windows 8 is the death of gaming (hint: for "openness," substitute "you give us money").

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

Please identify reasons that serious Windows gamers would ditch Windows to switch to a new system with a smaller AAA library and would require extensive setup with unknown and unproven hardware compatibility capabilities?

Cost? Console like ease of use? I can think of quite a few reasons.

1 - Cost: I already have a Windows system. Cost: Negative reason2 - Console like easy of use: Steam's "Big Picture" mode already exists and is not exclusive to this system. The gaming library and hardware taking advantage of it is notably larger and better working on the Windows PC. Easy of use: Negative reason

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Edit: And have you compared installing a distro like ubuntu to installing windows? Tell me how much hardware works out of the box on each of them...

Please do not tell me your premise requires a serious Windows gamer to not have Windows to work.I can guarantee you any piece of hardware I go to the store and buy and install will work on Windows as the major consumer PC solution.

Multiply those by a tiny fraction and you have Lunix's actual representation on Steam. It's amazing how much BS they're using to justify playing games on an operating system so unsuited that they're having to rewrite entire parts of it to end up with something that will still be worse than Windows.

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

What is the motivation for the many gamers (majority) who are familiar with and already have windows to move into a system that they are unfamiliar with?

you're thinking of Linux like a SysAdmin or Computer-Savvy person, not like an end user.

Thousands, nay Millions of folks use Linux-based operating systems on a daily basis and have no idea. Two best examples: OSX and Android.

I expect the same level of obfuscation of the sourceOS as those examples by Valve. I'm very much hoping for a 'power version' for us with a clue who will want to do things like add XBMC functionality, or have desktop access to make it our only machine.

Multiply those by a tiny fraction and you have Lunix's actual representation on Steam.

Which is entirely a function of the game distribution. It's not necessarily that people don't want to move, it's that they can't.

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It's amazing how much BS they're using to justify playing games on an operating system so unsuited that they're having to rewrite entire parts of it to end up with something that will still be worse than Windows.

An operating system "so unsuited?" Worse than Windows? How? Or are you just attacking blindly?

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

Who are already catered for much better by Windows. By, y'know, having working 3d-accelerator drivers for their video cards, unlike Linux.

Actually nvidia has pretty good 3d drivers for Linux. They're not open source, but I'm not RMS either so they do just fine. Anecdotically, back when I was playing WoW the performance was *better* on Linux with wine (so emulated) than on Windows.So it basically can be done. And with some financial incentive from Valve, even AMD can do working Linux drivers, I think.Those boxes won't be generic PCs, they will have hardware carefully selected for performance on Linux. All it's missing is some financial incentive to port titles to them, and I'm sure Valve can afford it.Maybe the SteamBox games will be ports from the PS4, which sort of runs BSD

Very nice, one of the few contenders that can actually deliver. Biggest issue I see is the controller. Virtually all Windows games are designed with the 360 controller in mind.

I would suspect the biggest issue is, in fact, the dearth of high quality games instead.

To me that's easier to solve. Game devs are already designing for DirectX/360/One PS3/4 etc etc. One more isn't going to break the bank, especially if Valve offers some sweet deals to devs to port their games, also all Valve games will be ported day one, I think they all have Linux ports already.

No the issue is going to be making sure devs do a 'real' port and not a half assed one just so they can cash their Valve cheque and move on and most of that will come down to interface.

TV interface devs already understand, no worries there. SteamOS UI is just a UI easily ignored as long as it stays out of the way, but the controller is the direct link from the machine to the players brain. Laggy, mushy, unresponsive controls are the death knell of any game system and must be avoided at all costs.

So what? you say 'All platforms had to defeat this issue'. True, but the problem is virtually every feature key to a modern controller is locked up in licensing and behind patents (rumble and motion control? get ready to pay) and I highly doubt MS will authorize the 360 controller for it.

So it's a significant hurdle to overcome. Build a great (not merely good) controller and then convince devs to support it properly as opposed to doing quick ports where all the controls still refer to the 360 controller.

All I want is just one valid reason why Win8 is horrible for PC games. Other than that, will a big blockbuster like BF4 run on SteamOS? If not, then what's the reason for going to a new OS?

That's what I was thinking. Some PC gaming friend of mine said Win8 was better for gaming than Win7... had better performance. I believe my friend over a salesman.

Aside from Battlefield 3 not supporting it I've had nothing but good things to say. DICE being lazy and letting memory leaks go unpatched for a year isn't Microsoft's fault. Unlike Linux we have a video driver that they can leak

And given how many different little versions of DirectX that are installed with every title you get, I'm not sure the "But DirectX is a standardized, unified set of libraries!" refrain really means all that much.

There's exactly one version of DirectX (9,10,11) installed on your Windows-machine: the latest of each branch.

I'm not sure why people would be excited for this. The only appeal to this is an OS that can be controlled with a controller.

I would assume it's implemented as a wrapper to just launch Steam's Big Picture. If you want to game on Linux, you can already do this, and you could auto-start Steam if you really wanted. I would assume you wouldn't/couldn't run other Linux applications on here, and it will only run Steam, similar to a console. It's great for Steam if you run this, since you suddenly can only play games through Steam.

So this would really only for people who are building their own dedicated PC-consoles, and I'm not sure there's a market for that.

On hardware Valve controls (a Steambox) , this has potential to be a major, important, big deal. On Valve-controlled hardware, they can ensure all the hardware works very well with their Linux distribution.

The idea that "PC Gamers don't care what the OS is" only makes sense as long as everything on their specific PC hardware works and all the games they want to play are on the OS. If some hardware doesn't, but changing to Windows specifically does get that something (accelerated video, off-brand sound, whatever) to work, or the game isn't available except on Windows, then said gamer cares very much at that point.

Developers develop games for Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, and PC because they suspect enough purchases to make their money back. How would developing with Linux support make their money back when they can just develop for Windows? Unlike the consoles and consoles vs PC, the overlap on Linux and either Mac or Windows is not going to be negligible.

Nope. The target market is game lovers who want high performance. Most won't care if it is Linux based or not.

What is the motivation for the many gamers (majority) who are familiar with and already have windows to move into a system that they are unfamiliar with?

you're thinking of Linux like a SysAdmin or Computer-Savvy person, not like an end user.

Thousands, nay Millions of folks use Linux-based operating systems on a daily basis and have no idea. Two best examples: OSX and Android.

I expect the same level of obfuscation of the sourceOS as those examples by Valve. I'm very much hoping for a 'power version' for us with a clue who will want to do things like add XBMC functionality, or have desktop access to make it our only machine.

No, I'm thinking of Linux as it is in the mind of people who already own and are comfortable with Windows.

If they want to turn it into a console to avoid the problems associated with linux that is fine, but it still leaves the question of why people who already have and are comfortable with windows would switch, and also negates any talk to it being an "open" platform.I haven't read anything saying SteamOS would be open, so perhaps that is the way they plan to go.

As I've said, I don't see what would move people to Linux when they are comfortable with windows, although if the cost is low enough the "streaming" feature may make it an add-on purchase for people.

He's still wrong about Windows 8 being "catastrophic". Aside from PC gaming being very popular right now, Win8 turned out to be...just another version of Windows. There's nothing wrong with Win8 gaming.

The only thing that worries me would be the other device support. Drivers for the Windows "XBox" controller, drivers for video cards, sound cards.

Anyone with more experience care to verify? nVidia, in my experience, updates their drivers pretty regularly, and to not be able to reap that benefit can mitigate gains from changing the OS.

edit: looks like drivers for the xBox controller aren't necessarily an issue. And nVidia drivers are a "meh". PhysX okay in Linux? As well, what about communications? These are the things that keep me up at night.